The works of Santiago Porter manifest a concern about the representation of absence, space and history. After delving into the intimate sphere in his photographic series titled Pieces (1993-2002), The Absence (2001-2003), Porter conceives the project Bruma, a series that he began in 2007 and consists of three chapters, which like a book, weave a story of cyclical evolution. In Bruma series Santiago Porter’s photographs are an essay on and about time. He is not attempting to write a new story but explore what is already written in the margins, everything that has not been monumentalized and for that reason is still beating softly in the sidelines. Because to evoke the past from the present moment challenge the way we think of ourselves, of who we’ve been, and why not, who we will become. In its first stage, public buildings play a role showing their function in a social context; revealing the deterioration of their facades: In this way, the shininess of the golden doors of the Ministry of Economy contrasted with the dilapidated Railway Hospital, highlights evidence of corruption. The second set of photographs bring together monuments that have became obsolete and therefore, much more powerful in their evocative nature: bullet hole marks in a brick wall, bronze letters stolen from what once was a tribute to the fallen in Malvinas; Evita and Perón beheaded. Finally, sealed concrete blocks surrounded by miles of flat and barren pampa, disconnected electricity masts, a dead forest and smoking sugar cane plantation ditches in a territory where not so long ago, one of the bloodiest chapters in our recent history began; landscapes that do not merit being used as postcard images and what also describe a country that builds ruins on purpose. It is precisely this use of contrasts and conflicting meanings tending towards oxymorons, which gives strength to these works; it is the act of shooting, transforming objects into images, making the weight of history more tangible and present. In this process, the presence of bruma (mist) is essential, the bruma functions as a support of the power that things acquire after having been photographed, it allows us to see, but at the same time creates a particular appearance that is obscured, and it’s with the presence of this veil that Rancière’s idea of “An image is never a straightforward reality” can be applied – there is a story encrypted in each of the images. The real aim of Santiago Porter’s images is to serves as a constructive memory to question the past and provide the setting for another game of history.
Santiago Porter was born in Buenos Aires in 1971. He has been awarded with distinctions and received many accolades, such as the Guggenheim grant in 2002 and also received an award from the Antorchas Foundation in Buenos Aires. In that same year he was invited to take part in the residency for visual artists held by the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada. In 2007 he received a grant to take part in the Intercampos III program organized by the Telefonica Foundation in Buenos Aires and received the First Prize for Contemporary Photography awarded by The Central Society of Architecture of Buenos Aires. In 2008 he was awarded the Petrobras Award for Contemporary Photography. In 2010 he was granted the National Grant from Argentina’s National Fund for the Arts. In 2011 he was selected to take part in the Artist’s Program at the Universidad Di Tella in Buenos Aires. He has published numerous books such as Pieces (2003) and The Absence (2007). He has been featured in important leading national and international publications. His work has been shown in numerous individual and collective exhibitions in Argentina and abroad and is also included in several public and private collections such as Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires – MALBA (Argentina), National Museum of Fine Arts – MNBA (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires – MAMBA (Argentina), Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario – MACRO (Argentina), Provincial Museum of Fine Arts Emilio Caraffa (Córdoba, Argentina), Museum of Art and Memory of La Plata – MAM (Argentina), Petrobras Collection (Argentina), Rabobank Collection (Argentina), among others. He lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
FESTIVAL
Paris Photo Los Angeles
May 1st – 3rd, 2015
Rolf Art
Paramount Pictures Studios
Los Angeles
780 N. Gower Street
Los Angeles, CA 90038
United States
